Pint to pint: White Bear Hotel, Masham

Our guide to the best British pubs. This week: White Bear Hotel, Masham, North
Yorkshire.

There's a warm welcome to be had in the White Bear in MashamPhoto: PA

By Alastair Gilmour

2:00PM GMT 17 Jan 2013

The steam billowing over the White Bear’s rooftop is heady with malted barley. It’s an aromatic appetiser promising flavourful beer to come, but there’s a catch.

We’re breathing deeply on Black Sheep ale from the brewery behind, while the pub is the “tap” for T&R Theakston whose own brewery lies a short walk away – and the two were once bitter rivals in a civil war that followed takeover after takeover and a deep family rift in 1992, when one disillusioned Theakston upped and founded Black Sheep.

The Theakstons may have crossed swords for a few years but happily the extended family now works amicably in tandem, promoting Masham’s unique position in brewing folklore.

The White Bear’s two bars bristle with Theakston’s handpulls: Black Bull Bitter, Hogshead Bitter, Golden Lightfoot and Old Peculier, a strong, dark and complex beer with a dash of independent spirit – a “peculier” is a parish outside the jurisdiction of a diocese.

The original White Bear was flattened by a German bomber in 1941, en route from a raid on Belfast, and was rebuilt in the nearby Lightfoot Brewery cottages (Masham is positively marinated in beer).

There it minded its own business until closing in the late Nineties, lying sulkily unloved and rotting. It seems years of neglect can be almost as destructive as a Luftwaffe Dornier. Only the bench seating in the public bar, a stained-glass window shimmering with coopers hammering barrels, and a glass-encased polar bear were salvageable.

The bear was shot in Alaska in 1901 by John Cunliffe-Lister, 3rd Baron of Masham, its bust donated to the pub by the Earl of Swinton to celebrate the wartime rebuild, but it was only during refurbishment in 2000 that its true stature was acknowledged. An expert engaged to clean it announced it was “a Roland Ward, the Picasso of taxidermy” who had practised his craft in Harley Street.

Visitors are told the bear is actually standing upright in a corridor behind the public bar (and some of us swallow it). This room is as friendly a bar as you’d wish to relax in. The lounge bar and dining room next door fill quickly with a mix of daytripping ramblers and locals who know where to find the best lunch in town – and a welcoming fire on a wet January afternoon.